MC Trepidation...

This August I will be the MC at my niece’s wedding.
AUGUST!
I am so honored that she asked me.
← I’m already planning for the thing. Four months in advance!
I take these gigs seriously!
For one thing, if I get into rehab soon enough, I am hoping to be totally off crack by then!
But besides the drug problem, I just want to be worthy of the invitation, you know what I mean?
I want to really make people laugh.
On that day, I want to be totally pissed... I mean poised, and prepared.
Plus, I want to hug a lot of young bridesmaids.
I have been an MC at several weddings in the past, so I sort of know the ropes. People ask me to do it because I love an audience. [Plus, I’m on crack.]

But here I am tonight, putting together a string of great jokes and fictitious stories, re-writing the lyrics to famous songs that I am going to perform… and I am struck by an overwhelming realization.
When it comes to really joking around about the perils of getting married, we tend to focus on the GROOM!
Without realizing it, I find that about 98% of my jokes are directed at the groom!
Brides!
Who jokes about a bride?
What kind of an MC is going to make fun of the bride?

No.
It is the MEN we focus on!
It is the MEN that are going to have to change the most, after the nuptials!
This…. this is funny!

But the bride?
My God, the bride is already perfect!
And she will get even more perfect after the wedding! Let someone argue with that fact! I sure as hell am not going to step into that brood of vipers!
It’s always the man that we poke fun at… as though he has ‘nary a clue of what he is getting himself into, here.
Because let’s face it.
He doesn’t.
No man does.

At least this is what I am, once again, counting on, as I weigh my HWJR.
Husband ← → Wife Joke Ratio.
My freshly re-written version of Terri Clark’s When Boy Meets Girl is ENTIRELY directed at the fact that the groom’s first day of marriage is going to be the first day of the end of his friggin’ life.
And I’m counting on people to laugh at this!

Can you imagine if I poked similar fun at my lovely niece, who is going to be sitting there like a wonderfully anthropomorphized Bambi?

I’d have all of these seven-foot tall groomsmen [not one of them over the age of 25] immediately plotting my assassination, while I innocently hover over the hors d’ouvres table like the veritable sandwich-vulture that I am……
“OK, when I kick him in the ‘nads and he doubles over, Mario here will throw the gunnysack over him while Chris brings the car around…..”
Know what I mean?

If I crack jokes about my niece, Amy, there will be instant smatterings of dissent, at each table….
“Who the hell is this guy, anyway?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.”
“I deny him, thrice.”
“Should we shoot him now, or wait a bit?”
“All I know is that he sure is not from MY side of the family!” [← And this last comment is from my MOTHER!]

Know what I mean?
No, no, my friends.
I have a good four months here to gather an ever-increasing pile of jokes about the groom.
The groom!

I was born at night…. but not last night!

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